Sensationalism
Related: attention - attraction - fascination - sensation - sensational - sensation novel (literary genre) - the yellow press
Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. --Aristotle via the Poetics.
Definition
Sensationalism is a manner of being extremely controversial, loud, attention-grabbing, or otherwise sensationalistic.
The term is commonly used in reference to the media. Critics of media bias of all political stripes often charge the media with engaging in sensationalism in their reporting and conduct. That is to say they charge that the media often chooses to report on shocking or attention-grabbing stories, rather than relevant or important ones. --http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensationalism [2004]
Dark tourism
Dark tourism or thanotourism is tourism involving travel to sites associated with death and suffering.
This includes sites of pilgrimage such as to Rome, Italy and the site of St Peter’s death, castles and battlefields such as Culloden near Inverness, Scotland, sites of disaster, either natural or man made such as Ground Zero in New York, USA, prisons now open to the public such as Beaumaris Prison in Anglesey, Wales, and purpose built centers such as the London Dungeon in England.
In a class of its own, one of the most notorious destinations for dark tourism is the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz in Poland. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_tourism [Dec 2005]
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